Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/59

 to be London's chief boulevard, although this thoroughfare, bordered by great luxurious hotels, becomes after nightfall an out-door bedroom for the penniless; millionaire and pauper sleeping within a stone's throw of one another. However well the Thames Embankment may compare with a Parisian boulevard during the day, all the brightness of the latter is absent at night, for here no cafés and restaurants face the river.

Stranleigh's first impression was how well the actual benches of the Embankment imitated their counterfeit on the stage. Even the slow policeman that passed him walked with McKinnel's measured step. The young nobleman aroused the first sleeper, asked a few questions, and receiving replies that he didn't in the least believe, presented the derelict with a sovereign, telling him to get something to eat, and a more comfortable bed. This was repeated again and again, and monotonous iteration indicated that no denizen of the Embankment was there through any fault of his own.

Stranleigh knew that many a man who later became famous spent his first night in London on the Embankment, and he hoped that by chance he might succour some genius, yet he fancied in such case his benefaction would not have been so greedily